SAN ANTONIO EXPRESS-NEWS

Concert leaves longing for good old days

02/26/2005

Mike Greenberg
Express-New Senior Critic

Way back in the good old days — say, the 1980s — a concert of new music meant an evening of new sounds, new forms, new intellectual and aural challenges, new ways to slice experience.

Some of the music might grate, some might provoke outright hatred, but at least it didn't just sit there like a pool of leftover Jell-O.

Which is what most of the music brought to mind on Thursday night's opening concert of the Society of Composers Region VI conference. The region includes Texas, the Ozarks and the lower Plains, though the composers come from around the country.

Running through this evening, the conference includes eight free concerts in the recital hall of the University of Texas at San Antonio's Loop 1604 campus. In his introductory remarks on Thursday, conference host David Heuser said 60 works had been chosen for inclusion, from some 235 submitted.

The opening concert attained a few modest peaks of well-wrought conservatism, mainly in vocal settings that stretched but did not abandon traditional tonal harmony. All the music was composed in the past five years.

In three songs from his "Family Portrait" cycle, Doug Davis exhibited a nuanced lyricism, carefully fitted to poems of mourning and transcendence, disciplined in their craft but free enough to express deep feeling. Soprano Linda Poetschke sang them luminously, especially the soaring "Alleluia," with the able partnership of pianist Christine Debus.

Paul Siskind's "Thr(e.e. cummingS)ongs" were a bit more expansive in style, the stretched-tonal idiom taking on a romantic fragrance in "there is," a spiky wit in "hist whist" and a sinuous sensuality in "it may not always be so; and I say." Tenor Michael Burgess' lithe, focused instrument treated them well, with beautiful support from flutist Rita Linard and guitarist Matthew Hinsley.

Michael Sidney Timpson's "Sneaky" for string orchestra reflected its title in brief lurking motives that skitter around the orchestra. The idiom owes a little to Philip Glass, but the piece does have a distinctive personality. The UTSA Chamber Orchestra under Terence Frazor gave a fairly messy performance, though concertmaster Joseph Barrera's solo was very nicely played.

Several of the other pieces rode a single melodic or rhythmic idea into the ground.

Austin Jaquith's Prelude for Orchestra was a dully repetitive essay in early 20th-century chromatic expressionism.

HyeKung Lee's "Reveil" for orchestra was livelier, with its pounding percussion and martial winds, and somewhat interesting in the way a serpentine melody weaves through the orchestra, but its ideas ran out before the piece did.

The performances, which required some forgiveness, were by the UTSA Orchestra under Eugene Dowdy.

Charles Norman Mason's "Three-Legged Race" for piano trio started out promisingly, with its running figure passing from voice to voice, but the piece just kept running in place, staying in the same constrained harmonic and rhythmic region. It was well played, though, by pianist Geoffrey Waite, violinist Mary Ellen Goree and cellist Dan Zollars.

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mgreenberg@express-news.net